Background fabrics are often overlooked, but they can transform the entire look of a quilt. Learn how to choose backgrounds that provide the right contrast and let your design shine, beyond just safe greys and whites.
Janelle Shane - Make Modern's Community Liaison
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When you’re planning a quilt, the background fabric is often one of the last things you think about when picking out fabrics. So often we don’t give the background a lot of thought, reverting back to those safe choices of grey, white or low volume.
However, the background you choose can change the look of the whole quilt, and will determine whether or not the rest of your fabrics truly shine, so it’s worth consideration. What fabrics make the best backgrounds? That depends on the design of the quilt, but generally it’s fabrics that ‘read’ as one colour when looked at from a distance and offer high contrast to the rest of the quilt. This includes solids, obviously, but also tone on tones or low volumes. Many natural dyed prints and batiks also make great backgrounds but these are a less modern choice.
It is better to avoid large scale prints, multicolour prints, and directional prints (unless you are using the direction as a design element).
Background’ refers to different things depending on the quilt design. It may be the background units in individual blocks, borders, sashings, or in modern quilting where negative space or alternate grid design elements are employed, it may be a much larger area. Probably the most important thing to consider when choosing a background fabric is contrast. You want the background to contrast well with all your prints, so you can clearly see the blocks.
Using a computer program to mock up how quilts will look on a different background can be a great way to help decide.
These mockups are EQ8 mockups of Kristy Lea’s quilt Starlight using her fabric line Create.
The obvious choices are neutrals – black, white and grey. These are crisp and classic and provide great contrast. They’re always a safe choice, and you’ll find that your prints contrast very differently with blacks to whites so you can change your whole quilt by just switching white to black. A popular variation on the white background is low volumes – very light prints, usually on white, that generally read as white. These create a bit of a scrappier finish and are always a great choice, which is why they’re so popular with modern quilters.
Rainbow Banner by Amanda McCabe, Make Modern Issue 35: The progression from light to dark grey in the background of this quilt adds extra dimension to the design.
But don’t think you have to stick with neutrals. In fact, brights can really provide contrast that change the look of the entire quilt. The legendary Freddy Moran said: “red is a neutral”, and she’s absolutely correct. When used in backgrounds, red creates a pop you absolutely cannot achieve with more sombre colours. The same goes for orange, aqua and plenty of other bright colours. Take a look at the colours in your prints and pick a shade that will work well with them. Consult colour theory to decide how you want to contrast – for example, if your prints are orange, a yellow background (an analogous combination) is going to look completely different to an sky blue background (a complementary combination).
Solids are great for modern backgrounds, and with the incredible array available, you should be able to find the exact colour. However, don’t overlook the subtle texture that tone on tone prints provide. Just make sure they read as a solid – prints that are coloured and white can be tricky here as the white changes the contrast.
Your background doesn’t just have to be one print or fabric. As with low volumes, which are most often used in a scrappy manner, you could choose a range of blue prints to depict sky, or pinks as a background for a child’s quilt. If the rest of your blocks are quite scrappy though, a single print or solid that works with all the scraps can help calm the scrappy down (and we all know sometimes that’s needed!). You could also use a mixture of solid prints for backgrounds.
When auditioning backgrounds for a quilt, it’s useful to spread the background print out and lay your other fabrics on top. Try with a few different backgrounds to see how it alters the appearance of the feature fabrics. If you’re planning on using a background for certain units in pieced blocks, stitch up a sample or two to see that the background provides sufficient contrast. If you design your patterns digitally, then simply switch out the background.
Sometimes the background becomes a design element in itself. For example, you might have a pop of a different colour background in one section of the quilt. The piecing remains the same but switching out the background creates added interest. Using stripes in the background, or a gradation, or two background fabrics, or a pop of colour randomly through background, or creating a secondary pattern in the background are all design elements that can all provide different effects that alter the look of the entire quilt. So the next time you’re designing a quilt, or choosing the fabrics for a ready made pattern, take a little more time to do the extra background work – it will stretch your design muscles and can be what makes the quilt a real show stopper. And yes, sometimes you’re going to come back to the basic neutrals, and that’s totally okay – but the challenge is seeing if there are other ways to do things.
This is an extract from Backgrounds by Jane Kelly. Read the full article in Make Modern Issue #37.
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